


What Goes Around

by Gemma_Inkyboots



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Body Horror, Breath of the Wild Sequel Trailer, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Magic, Undead, basically a fic of the trailer itself, but yeah if you don't like Sudden Wights be warned, not as bad as I'm making it sound, where the heck was the Triforce in BotW, with headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 22:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemma_Inkyboots/pseuds/Gemma_Inkyboots
Summary: In the aftermath of the Calamity, the ruins of Hyrule Castle may not be as abandoned as everyone assumes. Certainly there's lingering magic that has the same Malice taint as Calamity Ganon, but that doesn't mean the Calamity could return early......does it?





	What Goes Around

**Author's Note:**

> My favourite Zelda game is Ocarina of Time, at least in part because it was my *first* Zelda game, and I am (still) really pissed off about Skyward Sword getting jammed in as the first game in the timeline after the fact. Phooey to that, said I, and promptly wrote this with all my headcanons in mind after seeing the trailer for the Breath of the Wild sequel.
> 
> ...eventually wrote this, that is. I make no promises that this will break my too-long bout of writer's block at this point, but at least it's written and posted before I can get jossed.
> 
> Warnings for Dodgy Use Of Magic By Villains, large scary undead, and basically the same level of AAAA as the trailer but in prose.

The air was wisped with magic.

For all those long, interminable years trapped within Hyrule castle, bound within the ruins of her home and suffocating on the tainted Malice that filled it, Zelda could taste it on her tongue - Calamity Ganon’s blind, seething, searching power writhing in on itself trying to find a way out, surging to the limits of her strength when Link had awoken in the Shrine of Resurrection as though it could _sense_ his return.

It had been nothing like the whispers that had begun to drift from the depths below the ruins.

This was lilting, subtle tendrils of _old_ magic, old iron and blood on her tongue...an ancient hatred, still faint and distant on the surface but _coherent_ in a way that the Calamity had never been. The shadows clung to her, crawling up the torch she held, trying to smother its light; if it was still lingering here, deep in the ancient cave system beneath the castle where the Calamity had burst free all those years ago...

“Do you feel it?” she murmured to Link. She had learned the practised softness of a hunter’s voice, after the Calamity’s defeat; not all monsters died with their master, and neither she nor Link had been willing to leave Hyrule’s people to the beasts that still roamed their kingdom.

Link paused, casting back and forth along the tunnel they were following as he had done at regular intervals all the way down from the castle’s dungeons. Their pack animal, used to such caution by now, merely plodded along the path until Link could look straight up at Zelda where she perched atop it, without having to turn back to meet her gaze. He nodded; the blue of his eyes seemed to reflect something deeper, stranger, than the uncaring light of the luminous stone deposits scattered along the road. 

“I was afraid you would say that.”

*

They rested sparingly. The caves were vast, _ancient,_ older by far than the castle that had overgrown the original fortress town, and Zelda had no idea how far they ran. Or, entirely, what it was they were looking for down here. 

“Long ago, before our earliest records, Hyrule was a much smaller place,” Zelda said as she crumbled a dry roll between her fingers. Link cocked his head at her from where he crouched over their small fire, stirring honey through what perishable fruit they had left, and Zelda took the unspoken rebuke not to waste food and took a bite out of it before she continued. “Even the original castle was first built in a different location. No-one knows precisely where, but I personally doubt it could have been too far from here - all our oldest written records date back to the data purge after the last- the last Calamity, and the Sheikah have lost much of their history from before _and_ after that point.”

Link nodded patiently, though the faint impression of confusion creased between his brows. 

“Oh. Well - I suppose I’m just wondering... We could find so much that was lost. There may be archives down here, or ancient records - this could be a crucial find that would restore at least some of Hyrule’s past. But...” 

She hesitated, and Link nodded again, slower this time and with the same weight of understanding. They both felt it; though the Calamity had been banished once more, there was still an echo here, in the ground and in the air, running quiet and sinister in the water that had carved out this wider, higher cavern and trickled beside the path they took. There had been _evil_ here, ancient and unsleeping, and the hundred years of being caught between worlds had only poisoned what was left behind. And unlike the Calamity, all brute strength and ignorance, the lingering scraps of magic slinking free of the caves were - sharper. Cunning. And the further they went, the stronger it grew. Though the Malice tainting Hyrule had disappeared when they defeated and sealed Ganon, there was clearly still _something_ left that they needed to deal with, and that was alarming all on its own. 

What else could possibly have survived the Calamity’s occupation, right under its nose?

Deeper they went, and then deeper still, down into the roots of the earth. Zelda had lost track of time; there was only torchlight, stone-light, the soft trickle of water and the need to rest and water themselves and their bison. Both sun and moon had been left far behind, beyond the irregular stone walls and the intermittent blue glow.

“We must be almost all the way to the Great Plateau,” Zelda marvelled softly as they navigated around another outcrop of luminous stone. She let out a gasp as Link drew warily closer to a section of the cave wall that seemed smoother than the rest, his torchlight picking out regular, repeating markings that vanished behind the encroaching stone jumble. “Oh! Look at this - this must be Sheikah work, the markings look just like the oldest scrolls on the Calamity in the Castle archives!” Delighted, she scrambled down the side of her mount - undeterred, the great beast ambled on for a few steps more before coming to a faintly puzzled halt - and stepped up beside Link to peer as far as she could past the circle of torchlight. “It’s a shame only this corner seems to have survived - it must have been part of a much larger piece, once.”

Link looked with her, reaching up to prod at the deposits blotting out the images with fingertips scarred and calloused from years of swordwork and scrapes of mountain stone. Under his touch the wall was mottled with stains and growths, raised in places from its once-even uniformity by the passage of time and the trickle of water from above; mineral stalactites growing down the wall blotted out parts of what must once have been a great mural. 

“I wonder how old the history shown here must be,” Zelda murmured as Link drew back, rubbing damp fingertips together. “Look - that may be one of Urbosa’s ancestors. Whoever they were, they must have been a fearsome knight to be drawn so large.”

She pointed, and Link peered up before nodding in agreement - the mounted figure on the wall had been painted in the Sheikah style, but angles of solid colour blocked out the familiar curving designs that had been passed down in Gerudo culture for ages past reckoning. For a brief moment Zelda thought she could feel the sting of the desert as a sandstorm rose, smelling hot sand and lightning as a cruel wind hissed the promise of death in her ear - then it was gone, and Link was turning to look about them in wary hostility. As the torchlight bobbed and swung away from the wall, a shiver ran down Zelda’s spine like the ice of the desert at night.

She could almost swear the painted figure was looking back at her.

*

Despite Link’s growing conviction that they were no longer alone, despite Zelda’s hard-earned sense that something was not _right_ in the growing strains of magic filling the air, they found nothing further - the tunnel continued on with more signs of some ancient working in the occasional broken step, the edge of a fallen pillar, and occasionally the rare whole blockiness of a monument or trail marker carved with deep, sinuous designs that neither of them could read.

“You’ve seen these before,” Zelda said aloud as Link inspected one of them; he didn’t look back at her, but they both remembered the heat and storm-swollen clouds of the Faron jungle, and the dragon-heads guarding the three isolated shrine labyrinths. Monuments to an ancient grand design long since lost, and to find them here...

Despite their unease they pressed on, and eventually the caves became something that were almost proper hallways in places, stone-lined with broad stairs here and there that had been worn down from the passing of many generations of feet. Once they came to a great broken bridge that spanned a crevasse they couldn’t see the bottom of, even with the dotted blue lights of luminous stone speckled far below. To Zelda’s surprise, and Link’s confused alarm, there were creatures here somehow - a rat scampered from shadow to shadow ahead of them, and bats rustled in the dark.

“Where could they possibly have come in from? Surely it’s far too deep for there to be anything for them to eat,” Zelda whispered; not only that, but the air was getting thicker, dragging in their lungs. For all that Link checked their torches constantly as they burned and Zelda tried not to think of deep suffocating tunnels without clean air, there was no hint of material foulness as they breathed - the growing oppressive weight as they walked was on another plane entirely. And there was a sound, some discordant melody on the very edge of hearing, something almost familiar twisted out of true and felt as much as heard.

_Old blood, old hatred, a feeling like the thunder of hooves in the back of the mind and a child’s desperate fear-_

All at once the tunnel opened up around them. Zelda caught her breath; the ceiling had abruptly flung itself up far overhead as the passageway opened out, and the edges of the great open space ahead of them were lost to shadow. The echoes of their footfalls vanished away in the distance. Her ears twitched at the lack, though she barely noticed it consciously - as true sound disappeared the jarring melody seemed to swell, rising from the strange whirl of light in the centre of the cave.

“Link,” she whispered, his name thick and dry in her throat. Zelda could barely hear herself, and Link didn’t turn - they and their mount both stood in the entryway looking out across a great depression in the cave floor, out over an uneven ribbon of razor-edged stone that wrapped around itself to form a rough dais, one with spears of carven rock jabbing inwards from the walls.

Staring at the undulating mass of Malice coiling out in great ropey tendrils, grasping blindly outward from the plinth in the middle of the crater.

The bison let out an unhappy rumble that sounded far too loud in the pulsing non-sound, stamping its hooves against the scree; Zelda slid down from her seat on its back, catching up one of the torches strapped to its harness, and hurried to Link just in case the beast tried to bolt the wrong way. 

“I think we’ve found the source of the magic,” she said, and was distantly relieved that her voice didn’t shake. _Would Father be satisfied, I wonder?_

Link nodded, and handed his own torch to her. He slung his bow off his shoulder, grimly notching a steel-tipped arrow to it - not one of the Rito bows, praised for their accuracy but flimsier than the more solid workhorse of the Hyrulian knights; Link carried one of the bows they had taken from the Yiga clan members who had challenged them, and there was a dark sort of satisfaction to be had in it, to be using their enemy’s weaponry to remove the last stains of the Calamity from their kingdom. Zelda held both torches as high as she could - glad all over again that she had finally been able to cut her hair into a style both far easier to manage and unbefitting of a princess, now that she had no court and no crown to meet expectations for - and they moved together, Link setting his feet down slow and steady on the loose stones edging the crater as he sighted for the Eyes that must be controlling the Malice.

“I don’t see them,” Zelda whispered, her gaze darting from one writhing limb of Malice to the next. “Where _are_ they?”

Another rat ran past Link’s boots before he could answer her, skittering over the loose grit dusting the ground and aiming for one of the lances of rock jutting from the wall. One of the strange fronds of Malice boiled forward, overtaking the rat as it squealed in terror and tried to bolt - a rush of crimson-edged darkness and it was _gone,_ swallowed up with one last ringing shriek that made Zelda flinch.

The atonal ringing in their ears _throbbed_, the Malice squirming in blind reaction to the not-sound, and for a moment Zelda could hear nothing but the twisted sound of a dissonant choir and the rush of her own blood in her veins-

_thub-thub_

“Do you hear it?” she gasped, dropping one of the torches to mash her hand against her ear and try to block out the pressure; the other torch shook in her hand, and Link turned with his bow still at half-draw, his eyes ferociously, unnaturally blue and for an instant Zelda was wildly afraid of him, _for_ him, she couldn’t _think_ with that melody filling her head-

Link held the arrowhead in the torch’s flames for just long enough to set it ablaze, then snapped back to face the roil of Malice and fired.

The brave little spark of light soared out over the darkness, striking one of the twisting growths of Malice and being extinguished the moment it hit - but the brief flare against the shadows had been enough, and Zelda’s eyes widened. “There’s someone down there,” she blurted out, her free hand twisting unthinkingly into the back of Link’s tunic as he stepped back to meet her. Zelda couldn’t help but feel better at the contact, the rising, throbbing near-scream of the choir muted somewhat as her knuckles brushed Link’s spine. She felt more than saw his shoulders drop ever so slightly, hoped that what reassurance her presence could offer was helping, and took a half-step forward to point with her torch at what Link’s shot had made clear.

The spiral of light, the green flutters of magic that spun and curled downward until they became an arrow of blue-white in the dark - it was latched onto something in the shape of a man.

_thub-thub_

Link’s breath caught, and after a moment’s hesitation he shrugged the bow back into place over his cloak. At his gesture, Zelda offered him the torch.

She regretted doing so instantly. Link stepped forward and began to feel his way down the jagged swirl of rock that made up the side of the depression, easing toward the ropes of Malice with the torch held like a sword. “_Link!_ No-!”

He held his free hand out without looking back, not reassurance so much as a request for her to _wait_, but the rat’s death-scream echoed in her ears over the increased ringing pace of that horrible soundless choir that only got louder the further away Link moved. It felt hungry, like gleeful anticipation, and the _thub-thub_ came again as Link came within snatching range of the shifting darkness.

...wait.

Was it - retreating?

Zelda snatched up the dropped torch and scrambled over the lip of the hole, sliding down the rippled stone heedless of the way the knife-sharp edges bit into her boots and bloodied her fingertips. She staggered but didn’t fall when the floor evened out, and Link didn’t even look surprised when she caught up and matched her steps to his. She hadn’t been wrong - it wasn’t a trick of the changing light or the rising pressure of magic in the air. The boiling arms of Malice were pulling in on themselves, squirming and shrinking like withering roots in the sun as they approached.

“Perhaps it’s the sword,” she whispered, squinting past the throbbing song beating faster and faster in their ears and the thick coppery bitterness coating her tongue. Link shook his head, but slowly, uncertain; the Sword that Seals the Darkness had stayed sheathed on his back all the way down here, true, though from his hesitance Link himself wasn’t sure if it was affecting their surroundings or not.

Past the thinning Malice, the shape in the epicentre of the phenomena was gradually becoming visible - a giant of a man, arched backward from the slow, dry decay of a desert burial, dessicated after death yet still easily the size of the tallest Gerudo guardswoman, and from the dull shine of gold jewellery and the tangled sheaf of long red hair falling almost to the floor...

“A Gerudo,” Zelda murmured, intrigued and repulsed at once. The seamed bulk of the body’s limbs must certainly be dry as dust to have been preserved down here, but the shifting light and scarlet glow of the Malice surrounding it made the mummified flesh appear - slick, _raw,_ as though all the skin had been removed for safekeeping. 

_That’s quite enough of_ that, Zelda thought to herself with a rising edge of hysterical giggles adding themselves to the thought. _Whatever happened to this poor man, we must avoid the risk of joining him!_

The Malice had thinned substantially, looking far more like twisted tree roots or a virulent strand of clutching vine. Link took another step forward, his boot resting on the edge of the stone dais, with Zelda only a moment behind him with her own torch raised. From this close, as arresting and terrible as the silent corpse was, she couldn’t help but catalogue everything she saw - the brief amber glow of torchlight on a gold armlet, a glimpse of ancient designs woven into the dark, stained cloth draped and clinging about the man’s hips, the tendrils of Malice surging and squirming at the centre of withered muscles, likely over what remained of the man’s heart-

Her breath caught and the throbbing shriek of the inaudible choir gained a desperate, knife-edged anticipation that numbed her ears past endurance.

The blue-white arrow was a grasping clawed _hand_ with nails digging into ancient flesh, and if Zelda didn’t know better she could almost think the thing was _pulling_ the Malice up into the man’s remains like a dark shadow-

Link took another wary step left, and she heard the wordless exclamation that caught in his throat just before the torchlight roiled wildly - Link’s torch fell an instant before the rasp of a bowstring being pulled taut.

“Link-?”

There was a meaty _thunk_, and an arrow sticking out of the blinking, rolling, _glowing_ Malice-eye embedded in the corpse’s _forehead,_ and the cavern erupted with light before Zelda could catch the breath to scream. The bison bellowed in terror behind them, the sound of its hooves a fading thuder as it bolted. The voiceless choir let out a deafening pulse of not-sound that knocked her backwards, Link lunging forward to catch at her arm, and the shadows blazed upwards in the shape of a man lurching upright as the insubstantial hand _let go._

Link heaved her back up onto her feet, his bow clattering to the ground as he pulled her forward - she was going to be sick, the tainted magic in the air was ringing in her ears and pulling at her bones with _wrong wrong wrong_ and the world turning on its axis, and as the cave shook around them the only point of stability they had was each other.

And then blue-white light flashed like a lighting strike in the desert, and Link was wrenched out of her hold.

“_Link!_” she screamed, dropping her torch and reaching for him - the magic-light was _blinding,_ Link a black shadow edged in colour as the _thing_ snatched him up to dangle high overhead, his boots kicking as the light burned around his wrist like a small star-

Zelda snatched up Link’s bow, barely noticing her hand beginning to shine under her glove, she had no _arrows_-

Golden light drew a line between her hands, her fingers hooking over the bowstring without thought, and Zelda set her feet and breathed and drew the string back as though she had done this a thousand, thousand times as an arrow of pure brilliant light grew to fit her draw.

She loosed, and the arrow leaped from the string like a falling star. It sliced into the coils of sickly blue-green magic and burst with a flare of gold - the screaming choir let out a furious shriek that made Zelda stagger, the cave rocking around her with the force of it, and she blinked furiously and shielded her eyes as her vision bleared against the light.

_thub-thub_

When sound died and light faded, a corpse stood before her.

Bare, shrivelled feet stood braced squarely on the dais - the stone had cracked in two by the force of the magical explosion, but the thing’s ancient, tarnished jewellery and its stained wrap draped from hip to ankle were untouched by all but time. The body - the wight, the _stahl-**thing**_ \- was taller than she’d realised, taller than her father, taller than _Urbosa_, broad-shouldered and heavy-boned and as it shifted to look down at her its slick dessicated muscles slid horribly over each other, gaping open in places and baring _something_ underneath that gleamed leathery-purple in the dim light.

The tendrils of Malice had disappeared, only scraps of a gently tumbling purple glow remaining to drift in idle circuits around the thing’s massive frame. Link hang limp in the grip of one huge, withered hand, head lolling and his eyes closed.

Zelda gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on the bow.

“_Release him,_” she ordered, and the thing began to laugh.

It _laughed_ at her, jaw open and head thrown back so its earrings jangled and the golden sigils at its shoulders let out an atonal clatter as they crashed against themselves. For all her bravado the sound shook her, set her stomach roiling and curling like ice around her heart.

_Little princess,_ it said, its head rolling forward horribly and its dry hair shushing like old leaves. She heard the words in her _bones. You haven’t changed at all._

“What _are_ you?” Zelda whispered, her knuckles white around the Yiga bow. The Master Sword was lit up at Link’s back, what little she could see of it over his shoulder blazing with fury past the barrier of its scabbard - her own hand was glowing, _Link’s_ hand was glowing, and for all that the magic of her ancestors was screaming in rage and horror at the back of her mind she didn’t know what was _happening._

The giant scoffed at her, shaking its head as condescending as any courtier, Link still held up off the floor as though he weighed nothing at all. _How soon they forget,_ it mocked. _You hold the Triforce of Wisdom, and yet you know nothing at all._

That...resonated, oddly, like a plucked string or drop of water into a still pond, and Zelda blinked as the magic at the back of her mind tried to rearrange itself into strange shapes. 

_I had hoped for something greater than this,_ the thing mused, one wizened hand tapping its claws at its chin in a mockery of contemplation. _After my Malice-spirit broke your pitiful kingdom, and the hundred year delay to the great cycle of my revenge - well, I had expected something more...impressive. But then..._ It sneered at her, the vile gleam of its eyes glittering in black sockets _You have always been children._

Its grip tightened on Link’s wrist, and Zelda flinched as he tensed and cried out, his eyes opening as blue light snapped and crackled down his arm. The golden glow under his glove pulsed like a heartbeat, brightening frantically, and Link arched and kicked in the thing’s grip - golden veins crawled up Link’s throat, over his jaw, and some terrible _imbalance_ drew on Zelda’s own ancestral magic and left her reeling.

_”Let him go!”_ she shouted, bringing up the bow; it shone brighter with her terror and fury, how _dare_ this thing hurt her own chosen knight - her _friend_, her brother-

What?

The arrow had formed before Zelda’s confusion could stifle it, and she aimed right between the hollow eye sockets before the thing could do anything worse.

_You are brave,_ it growled at her, the Malice-eyes in its seamed face flickering like wildfire. _I will grant you that,_ Princess. _But Courage will not save you now._

Its grip twisted around Link’s arm. The golden veins crawling over Link’s skin flashed bright, his eyes lighting up from the inside and shining gold as his mouth opened in soundless agony - in the instant between the light flaring too brightly for her to see and her sight returning, Link’s scream tore the air apart.

A golden - _something_ hung in the air between them, spinning gently as its radiance lit up the cave. For a moment Zelda couldn’t look away - it felt _familiar,_ as straightforward as a sword at her side and a shield at her back, as comfortable and reliable as-

_Link!_

Zelda tore her gaze from the light - _Triforce,_ a voice almost but not quite her own whispered in her ear - and caught back a gasp as she found her knight. For a moment she couldn’t see if Link was _breathing_ before his lips parted on a shallow, rasping breath that seemed to exhaust him. 

_The Triforce of Courage,_ the thing murmured, and Zelda’s hands tightened on her bow. The arrow of light hadn’t dissipated as her draw had slackened, and her fingers curled silently on the string. _At last. All three pieces of the Triforce shall be mine, and I will finally be free of this cursed half-life! And it’s all thanks to you._ It turned back to Zelda, _smirking_ at her, and when she raised the bow had the gall to laugh at her again. _Too late, Princess. First the Triforce of Courage, then the Triforce of Wisdom, and then - then nothing in Hyrule can stand against me! And, of course, you don’t want to risk your little friend._

It dangled Link in front of her like a broken doll, and its laughter only cut short when she adjusted her aim. _No-!_

Zelda fired, and the Triforce of Courage shattered into pieces. 

_NO!_ the giant roared - the pieces hung in the air, spinning in place faster and faster, and as it lashed out with terrifying speed they darted away in all directions, vanishing _through_ the cave walls with nothing but fading trails of light left behind. 

The undead thing whirled on her, Link swinging from its grip. _You foolish CHILD!_ it raged, and Zelda braced her feet to fire again. _You have no idea what you’ve done!_

“Oh, I think I do,” she replied, though that knowledge was at best a hazy thing for all that her mind was spinning with the ghosts of memories not her own. Golden pieces shattering - a dozen lifetimes, a dozen faces, all of them with Link’s steady blue gaze - darkness, light, crystals, goddesses... 

_I will end you,_ the thing promised, the bloody rage in its voice chilling the marrow in her bones. _You and your precious knight both. I have waited millennia for this, outlasted the Golden Realm again and again, and you will not stop me from claiming what is mine!_

Zelda’s gaze flickered. Link’s eyes were open just a slit, a hint of brilliant blue visible and meeting hers. _Go,_ his fingers gestured, barely a twitch, and Zelda shook her head the merest fraction. 

_Not without you!_

_**Go,**_ Link signed again, then yelped as the giant shook him violently in its fist. 

_You won’t get in my way this time,_ it snarled, then whirled back to Zelda as she raised the bow again. _Your kingdom is mine, Princess, and you won’t escape me!_

“We faced down Ganon and defeated his Malice,” Zelda snapped back, taking a swift step back as the light glimmered warningly between her hand again. “Whatever you are, we will defeat you too!” 

The thing stopped in its tracks, scoffing at her before Zelda could consider this a victory. _You know_ nothing, it said again, vicious mockery making her ears ring. _You think it a victory, to defeat the mindless magic that haunted your castle? That was nothing but a distraction, a shade for you to chase as I gathered my strength._

It stood tall, long-dried red hair faded in death and dark against the golden headdress it wore. _Now you face me down, little Princess - now you see the true face of your enemy after all these thousands of years._ The thing’s face twisted, jaw working into a bare-fanged mockery of a corpse’s grin. _Now you face Ganondorf, the eternal Demon King!_

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then Zelda gets teleported out somehow because Magic, the opening credits run, and we get to run wild across Hyrule with Zelda as the main playable character. :D


End file.
